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Harvard Study: Biggest Factor in Divorce Is Husband's Employment Status
- jaequery 10y agoHow am I not surprised?
- tamana 10y agoTo quantify it, yes.
- koolba 10y ago> The big factor, Harvard sociology professor Alexandra Killewald found, is the husband's employment status. For the past four decades, she discovered, husbands who aren’t employed full time have a 3.3 percent chance of getting divorced in any given year, compared with 2.5 percent for husbands employed full time. In other words, their marriages are one-third more likely to break up. Interesting. I'd be curious to see how the hours spent at work impact that number. Specifically, do longer hours away at the office lead to a more stable marriage? Will having a second (or third!) job increase my chances of maintaining a nuclear family?
- niftich 10y agoPresumably, the full-time job's contribution to financial security is the driver of this indicator, rather than its contribution to lack of facetime between spouses. But as these are confounding variables -- they correlate inversely -- it makes testing it difficult.
- ethanbond 10y agoI imagine there are a lot factors. Time spent together skyrocketing, financial instability causing stress, and the fact that a lot of men tie their identity to their employment so strongly. Becoming unemployed is immensely turbulent in pretty much every way.
- LA_Banker 10y ago>and the fact that a lot of men tie their identity to their employment so strongly. That's a really interesting point, especially in light of the study pointing out that it's moreso job status that's a risk factor than money problems. One would normally think the two would go hand-in-hand in terms of a divorce autopsy. But as you (and the study) point out, there's very much distinct.
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- acangiano 10y ago> a lot of men tie their identity to their employment so strongly I wonder if the other side of the coin isn't that wives tend to respect their husbands less when these earn less than they do. It could be because it violates a social norm caused by society's gender role expectations. Research found that even employed men who earn a bit less than their wives are affected by higher divorce rate. So we can cast these men as insecure and emasculated, or it could be a mix of both men and women's reaction to the situation, along with many other variables that you've hinted at.
- anonbiocoward 10y ago> it violates a social norm This story hit me pretty hard. While I was in medical school, my wife's family, especially her mother, routinely encouraged her to divorce me. We had two small kids, and I had gone on job interviews and seen the offers I was getting without a graduate degree, despite a BS in physics and 7 years of experience. It was obvious to everyone that medical school was the right course of action in the long term but it would be hard. I didn't realize it would get harder when her family started jumping on any opportunity to point out my "temporary financial embarrassment". On a day-to-day basis, she was working 40 hours a week and while med school was paid for, and I had a small stipend, her paycheck was better. And cognitively, she understood that. But her brothers and mother, and eventually her father told her to "get rid of him". We stuck it out. They wonder why we don't fly across country to visit them much...
- tamana 10y agoHow does the math go when you compound those rates over 30years?
- codemanneil 10y agoBased only on intuition, my guess is no. It seems more likely that husbands not working full time are more likely to have financial instability, which would be a cause of stress on the relationship.
- tlrobinson 10y agoFrom the second paragraph: "A Harvard University study suggests that neither financial strains [...] is typically the main reason for a split."
- LA_Banker 10y agoThe headline of the story itself literally reads "Don’t Blame Divorce on Money."
- rogerdpack 10y agoThis is a tricky one. Once again it could just be correlation, and "people who can't hold down a job" are more likely to get divorced, not necessarily "some person who gets fired" is more likely to get divorced, non causal as it were...
- antisthenes 10y agoMy interest lies in why is the baseline so high in the first place? 2.5%/y sounds like an unacceptable risk , considering how devastating divorce is for men by design (in the USA, at least)
- sokoloff 10y agoAn unacceptable risk, compared to what? Never marrying? Living comes with a 100% chance of dying.
- tamana 10y agoYes, compared to never marrying, maybe paying child support but not alimony, or compared to getting sterilized.
- sokoloff 10y agoI don't think that 2.5% is evenly distributed (as in, every year each couple pulls a ball from a lotto machine with 39 green and 1 red ball in it). I know my own chance isn't 0%, but I'm confident that it's lower than average. I choose to be married to my wife and to raise our kids in that framework. It's not easy every day, but it's absolutely an acceptable risk, IMO.
- autokad 10y agoi heard there's a lot of truth in the '7 year itch' milestone, but I havent seen the #s
- enave 10y agoYes but there's no alternative to living, so it's not a factor to consider.
- rhino369 10y agoThat the average for all marriages, but certain groups account for a disproportionate amount of divorces. The rate is a lot lower if you take out groups like that: under 20 when married, shotgun weddings, the already divorced, poorly educated, etc. IIRC, latinos who marry under the age 18 have an 80% 5-year divorce rate. I'd heard people say a 20% lifetime chance of divorce if you are a middle class, educated, non-divorcee, and over 25. But I can't vouch.
- caf 10y agoWell, there's been at least one study purporting to show that longer commute times correlate with a higher chance of relationship breakdown, so that would tend to push the other way. http://www.scienceofrelationships.com/home/2014/1/2/longer-commutes-linked-to-higher-likelihood-of-divorce.html http://www.scienceofrelationships.com/home/2014/1/2/longer-c...
- finid 10y agoStatistically, especially for a study of this sort, a difference of 0.8% is not that significant.
- geezerjay 10y ago> Interesting. I'd be curious to see how the hours spent at work impact that number. I'de more interested in comparing these percent changes with the sample's margin of error. Extrapolating conclusions based on a deviation of 0.8% sounds an awful lot like grasping at straws.
- camelNotation 10y ago3.3 percent is still very, very small. That's encouraging.
- DefaultUserHN 10y ago>Specifically, do longer hours away at the office lead to a more stable marriage? Will having a second (or third!) job increase my chances of maintaining a nuclear family? Well, obviously, if you work 24/7, you'll have the perfect marriage. LOL.
- skylan_q 10y agoPoor journalism, yet again. Factor implies causal link. It's just a correlation in this case.
- Retra 10y agoYou don't think there's any causal link?
- seizethecheese 10y agoThere may be, but it also may be that there is a third factor which makes the husband more likely to be unemployed and also a less valuable mate.
- hueving 10y agoYeah, if the husband is emotionally unstable that could lead to both things.
- greenyoda 10y agoIn fact, I can think of several factors like that: alcoholism, drug addiction, anger management issues, clinical depression, chronic diseases, etc.
- lmmlzxx 10y agoAnd potentially that men (and women) may react a certain way to unemployment that makes them difficult to be with.
- Retra 10y agoIf there is a third factor, that doesn't stop anything else from being a factor.
- vacri 10y agoThe very word 'factor' requires there to be more than one. A single thing can't be the factor.
- toodlebunions 10y agoAnecdotally, every household I know who has gotten divorced had one of two deciding factors; either they didn't get along, or there was infidelity.
- nikdaheratik 10y agoInfidelity is more often a symptom than the actual root of the problem. While some people just can't help themselves, more often what happens is one or both aren't getting the support they need from their spouse and they start looking elsewhere because of it. Then cheating, fighting, divorce. Not really an excuse, so much as an observation.
- wutbrodo 10y ago"They didn't get along" hides a lot of complexity, since a lot of concrete things can put strain on a relationship and then the couple "doesn't get along". In fact, this practically reduces to a tautology, since deciding to get a divorce means that you're goiong through something severe enough that staying together isn't considered to be the better option.
- maxxxxx 10y agoFrom personal experience I can confirm that finding. During the tech crash in 2002 I was unemployed for a year and it took several more years for me to get back to the salary and position I had had before the crash. I was frustrated and depressed by my failure to provide and my wife was frustrated with me too. This time damaged my marriage a lot and things never got back to how they had been previously.
- ktRolster 10y agoThis time damaged my marriage a lot and things never got back to how they had been previously. Wow, that sounds drastic. What happened?
- Xunxi 10y agoSame boat, I was picking up almost any job to keep the family afloat, one time I got home and my partner was lying in the couch and crying. I thought it was the impending hardships we were going through so i cuddled and talked her into believing good times were ahead. Her response was "baby I'm pregnant and I'm not sure its yours" The rest is history. Luckily I bounced back, the boy was mine but phew..!
- MollyR 10y agoThat doesn't sound like a healthy relationship.
- zaroth 10y agoFor what definition of "healthy"? Few marriages are perfect, and many are quite broken in many respects. Stress drives people to do all sorts of things they might later regret. But if an affair is unhealthy, by that definition literally most marriages are.
- MollyR 10y agoStress doesn't absolve you of responsibility for your actions. Most marriages being degrees of unhealthy doesn't equate to most marriages having affairs in them. If my husband had an affair, child or no child, It would be an instant divorce. I could never trust him again.
- alex- 10y agoMaybe people in unhappy marriages find the strain leaks into their professional lives?
- lifeisstillgood 10y agoThe couples income and wife's economic independence did not correlate to divorce (post 1970s). Which implies that the lack of a full time job is not a proxy for "money worries" but instead seems to be a proxy for something else - potential the husbands behaviour, wife / social perceptions of husband etc. Basically I infer that couoles pull together when faced with external financial stress, but if the husbands a dick about his job it's a different matter
- wutbrodo 10y ago> if the husbands a dick about his job it's a different matter I'm not sure why you're convinced that the husband's behavior is the causal link (if there is one: the headline implies there is though the study only shows a correlation). I find it just as easy to imagine that, just as gender roles downplay women's potential contributions in the workforce, they reduce men to workhorses in family and relationships. It could just as easily be the wife being a dick about having an unemployed husband (as the article mention, financial strain per se was controlled for). I personally had a friend in high school who had really rich parents and whose dad retired early and was a stay-at-home dad (his mom was employed as an executive at a big bank). I would hear about him getting shit for being stay-at-home dad despite the fact that everybody in the family (himself included) was really happy with the arrangement.
- ImTalking 10y agoIt can go the other way as well. It would be interesting to study any change in the percentage of divorces in households where incomes/assets increased. In my case, I sold a business for a tidy sum, which then allowed us to divorce without financial difficulties. It is true that a lot of marriages unhappily continue because either party is unable to financially support themselves alone, especially when kids are involved.
- rustynails 10y agoIt's a disappointing article in that it makes many narrowly focused and unfounded assumptions and one conclusion. I've recently been doing an indepth study of sexism in Australia starting at 1970. I've poured over archives (and I'm documenting it) to see how Australia went off the rails with its sexist attitude (eg. Domestic Violence is male only, or a revised false history of voting-who could and when). What I have noticed is that there were plenty of ads and articles back in the early 70s (eg. One bank advertised its female branch manager with a large photo, quite proudly) that are inclusive, unlike today. TV adverts had plenty of representation in work, sport, etc. watch the "life be in it" as an example. I know that there was an inclusive attitude back in the early 70s that we have lost. As an example, check out Science Week, aimed at kids, that has several girls only events and competitions. This sort of sexism was unprecedented from 1970-2000 (and possibly earlier). Also add that all of my female ancestors from 1900 onward held good jobs and were largely financially independent (which contradicts the article saying it didn't really happen before 1975). I've never been able to reconcile the modern story compared to my own family's history. It might be luck. So, the article concluded that the difference is that women can now work. It ignores depression, stress (non financial), Boredom, lack of self-worth etc. if a person defines themself by a career and that career vanishes, it can turn an individual and their family upside down. I'm not surprised the authors focussed on housework and financial independence and ignored almost everything else as it seems to be the modern trend (ala domestic violence is male only). I'm curious to see if any media outlets in Australia pick up on the blatant sexism of Science Week (targeted at kids). The last 10 years are proving to be the most sexist (by far) that I've ever seen. I'm doing some research by looking at government, education (which is largely government) and media. I will include photos, videos and loads of references - but it's a big job. It will take time when I am committed to work and family too.
- Gustomaximus 10y agoWhenever someone I know is breaking up I ask, "Money or sex?". It's always one of these reasons.
- zaroth 10y agoYeah, I've heard this before from recent divorcees. But in a more stricter form of; marriages end in divorce when the wife doesn't get enough money or the man doesn't get enough sex. Horribly stereotypical, sexist, and crude but does seem to aptly describe the proximate cause of many divorces.
- tomp 10y agoI can see "stereotypical", but why "sexist"?
- johnking 10y agoAnyone have a link to the actual study?
- AlexCoventry 10y agohttp://www.asanet.org/sites/default/files/attach/journals/aug16asrfeature.pdf http://www.asanet.org/sites/default/files/attach/journals/au...
- johnking 10y agoThanks Alex!
- DominikR 10y agoI don't know what the laws are in the US regarding divorce but there's an astonishing imbalance in favour of women in many EU countries that causes marriages to be an unacceptable risk for me and many other men. You can get divorced for no cause (no infidelity, financials are fine and you didn't do anything else wrong) and you'll be forced to hand over 40% of your net income to your ex-wife for the rest of your life. (even if there are no children - if there are, you get to pay even more) I'm fine with women leaving for no cause (it's her business) and also with financially supporting children (as probably most men are) but I'm not going to sign a contract that could potentially leave me financially broke for no cause. So even though the Harvard study might give some insight to married men on what they could do better I doubt that marriage under the current framework will even exist in a few decades.
- karmajunkie 10y agoIt varies widely from state to state. Texas doesn't have alimony except under some narrow conditions, but Massachusetts is so liberal with it that it actively discourages women from remarrying.
- tomp 10y ago> I'm fine with women leaving for no cause (it's her business) and also with financially supporting children (as probably most men are) I'm not OK with that. I would wnt to keep shared custody of children (or full custody if she doesn't want it), and share the financial burden equally. But that option is often forcibly denied to men...
- thaumasiotes 10y ago> I'm fine with women leaving for no cause (it's her business) and also with financially supporting children (as probably most men are) My mother's parents divorced acrimoniously. She told me that her mother was constantly fighting to receive child support checks. They were always late, any disputes that could be raised were raised, etc. When she went off to college, the checks were assigned to her rather than her mother. And, like magic, they arrived on time and in full, with never a word of complaint. I think a majority of men are indeed quite willing to support their children financially, even children they don't see much. But money extracted from you by a court and handed over to your ex-wife to be spent however she sees fit is something a little different.
- rezashirazian 10y agoA man without a job is much more unbearable than a man without money.
- zaroth 10y agoBazinga
- jbritton 10y agoIt would be interesting if one could predict a likelihood of divorce based upon a number of inputs, like credit scores, age differences, education levels, income, hours worked, number of children, smoking, etc. I suppose the possible set of criteria could be large.
- sverige 10y agoI have personally witnessed couples where the cause of the job loss was marital stress. Husband's job performance suffered because of things going on at home, company decides to cut back jobs, stressed husband is on the low end of performance and gets cut. It just adds to the mess at that point. Often the wife felt that the husband was less than he was before without his job, and ditched him. I've also seen men in that situation who bounce back professionally after a divorce. Usually not immediately, but relatively short term (1 to 5 years). The correlation is not that surprising, but I agree with others here who note that it is not provable as causation. Too many factors.
- tpro 10y ago>I've also seen men in that situation who bounce back professionally after a divorce. Usually not immediately, but relatively short term (1 to 5 years). That makes a lot of sense. That 1 to 5 year period may be due to depression, despondency and general lack of motivation. If they get through that there may well be strong motivation to rebuild yourself. Plus, if you no longer have a spouse and children waiting at home there is no one to complain if you start putting in extra hours.
- notacoward 10y agoExtrapolating from that correlation!=causation theme, now I wonder if that "thing that happened in 1975" was something affecting people's marriages or something within those marriages affecting everything else.
- invertOfControl 10y agoSolid proof that there's little loyalty beyond whatever's attached to a wallet. Love is a plaything for deluded teenagers.
- lmmlzxx 10y agoI'm not working right now and my wife is supporting me. To be brief, I'm taking time to be healthier mentally and my wife can see that I'm making a concerted effort. I let her know frequently how much I appreciate it, and I'm also accomplishing a lot and putting myself in a position to be successful again in the near future. I've supported her financially at times in the past as well. Because of this, we're actually in a very good place in our relationship. I had put a lot of stress on her by being manic, obsessive, paranoid (not about her or our relationship), constantly using, etc. We've both noticed the improvement and have been more introspective and open about what causes us to argue. Anyway, just a counter-anecdote to the top comment.
- zepolen 10y agoconstantly using?
- reefoctopus 10y agoHe is likely referring to hard drugs of some sort. "Using" connotes methamphetamines or heroin.
- lmmlzxx 10y agoNo meth or heroin for the last many years. I never liked either much anyway. I've referring mostly to psychedelic drugs and marijuana, which normally are considered soft, but I've consumed them to a degree that would probably shock most people.
- lmmlzxx 10y agoConstantly using various recreational drugs. It's actually not something my wife has a problem with at all, and even recently she encouraged me to keep doing so. The decision to stop was my own. There have been many extended periods of heavy use and total abstinence in my life already, and I wouldn't change that. In general it's a habit that I have good control over, and one that has never jeopardized my physical wellbeing. Emotionally, psychoactive drugs can have myriad effects, but on the whole they have influenced my personality in remarkably positive ways.
- kaitai 10y agoI find the correlation-causation discussion a bit troubling. What if, for instance, men who want a divorce manage to quit working/become involuntarily unemployed because they don't want their incomes going toward alimony for a spouse they now dislike? Or what if it's like those initial studies linking low body weight with high mortality, which we found were mixing together healthy skinny people and people who'd lost a lot of weight due to cancer? Maybe men who are involuntarily unemployed are drawn from a mix of guys with bad luck and guys with traits that cause them to be less stably employed? How do these decisions fluctuate or not with the national unemployment rate? It seems like this is an interesting exploratory study but not yet very specific.
- KKKKkkkk1 10y agoIf we realize that the legal system has made the wife essentially a stockholder who is entitled to a stream of dividends from her marriage, and who has a right to sell when she sees fit, it's no surprise that women choose to sell when there is a sustained decline in earnings.
- zaroth 10y agoIt really is a lease-hold. There's no selling the shares, and the dividends don't stop. Apparently the wife keeps the shares until remarrying.
- dredmorbius 10y agoAnd that men choose not to enter into that business partnership.
- GFK_of_xmaspast 10y agoIf you assume an absurdity you can deduce all sorts of things.
- tempVariable 10y agoNot lying when I say this and I quote a certain wife who I know "... I wish he was drinking, or bad to me or the kids. It would makes things much easier ..." This is in a situation where she is absolutely not fit for family life and is the one who is unprepared for realities of being a mom and a wife. Literally, this is a person who has not grown up yet and constantly looks for comfort without being able to show it to her family. I honestly can say that folks get into marriages more by happenstance than solid planning. Maybe I'm wrong. Who knows.
- zeofig 10y agoI used to be bothered by lots of stuff. All the dying, the diseased, the suffering, the doomed... Luckily, this is all just a product of our political system, and if you have a problem with that then you're quite simply a goddamn communist.
- DefaultUserHN 10y ago
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- nihilum 10y agoSo many white knights, and so much virtue-signalling. Men of the world, quit fighting for the other side; you have nothing to lose but your chains. Regardless, women won't become interested in you based on what you write on a pseudonymous online forum.
- zaroth 10y agoHere's the worst thing about this... if you are married, and working on your pre-revenue startup as a solo founder out of the house... that is another description of a person that we call "unemployed". Whoops, yeah that part of building a business, we do not talk about so much. :-/
- proc0 10y agoWell we know women choose men based on how likely they'll be to commit and properly provide to her offspring. So I guess it's not much of a surprise there. What I think is surprising, is that it seems society looks at women as the victim of a divorce, when this is telling a different story where women have a plan of when to exit.
- Tomrn 10y ago"Results from models with alternative cutpoints at 1980 and 1985 are shown in the online supplement." Does anyone have a link to the online supliment? Also would it be normal practice for a study like this to make the raw data aviailable? I'd love to take a look. As it's not totally clear how the 3.3% figure was arrived at. This sentence struck me as a little odd: "For example, I use employment from 1985, reported in survey year 1986, to predict marital dissolution in 1987" I would have thought unemployment in the actual year of divorce would be more important when looking for a corellation? Not looking at the husband's unemployemnt two years previously?